Minuets by Guitar Villain
by Bar Sira
Summary: What a difference one word can make…
1. Peek, Splinter, Thought, Too

**Author's note:** As my regular readers know, I have made it a hobby of late to take passages I find on Harry Potter stories that have one crucial word misspelled or misused, and then write stories in which these malapropisms are taken literally. Now, we all know that such passages are not confined to the Harry Potter subcategory; hence, the present collection of Miraculous tales. As in the original "Minuets", the attributions may or may not be verifiable when you read this, since the authors in question may choose to correct their syntax, change their pen names, and/or delete their stories; still, you have my word that these passages have all really appeared in this subcategory.

A word about technique. Obviously, none of these vignettes actually reflect the intentions of the authors quoted, and in many cases the whole context of the passage has been radically altered. However, I have made it an ironclad rule that any pronoun will refer to the same person or thing in the Minuet as in the original story, and any direct quote will be attributed to the same character. (And of course this applies to OCs and historical figures as well as to canon characters.)

 **Disclaimer:** _Miraculous_ belongs to Zagtoon; the stories quoted belong to the authors named; the cover image is by Filippo Baratti; various other allusions to works and persons not my own abound. The stories themselves, however, are strictly my own work.

 **Other _Minuets_ collections:** If you enjoy these tales, you may also wish to look into "Minuets in Aeolian Mode" (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), "Minuets Assemble!" (Avengers [Movies]), "Minuets by Brain Matter" (NCIS), "Minuets by John Williams" (Star Wars), and "Minuets with Bombadil" (Lord of the Rings) – and, of course, the Harry Potter series that started it all, "Minuets in B Minor". All are currently available on my profile.

* * *

 _"I'm untying you, but you'd better not peak. Got it?"_ –marauderluverz, "How to (Accidentally) Kidnap a Teenage Super Model"

"Little late for that, Bugaboo," said Chat. "I'm pretty sure I peaked years ago."

Ladybug rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean," she said. "Don't go blurting out Professor Richard's akuma name again and summoning your power ahead of time. I need you to be on hand if we're going to take him down."

"Oh, that," said Chat, flushing slightly. "Right, sure. No problem."

"Okay, then."

With that, Ladybug got to work. The knots binding Chat to the lamp-post were a little tricky, but she forced herself to stay calm and work them out rationally, and it paid off; within minutes, she had successfully untangled the greater part of the rope. "How's that?" she said, with one final tug.

Chat gave his torso an experimental wriggle; the ropes fell off around him, and he leaped to his feet with a grin. "Seems good to me," he said. "Much obliged, milady. Now let's go see about teaching Cataclysm a thing or…" He trailed off, and glanced down at his suddenly green-burning hand. "Oh, shoot."

Ladybug groaned. "Really, Chat?" she said. " _Really?_ "

* * *

 _"The art room's door hadn't lasted long… Nathaniel had watched it get ripped from the doorframe and splitter as it collided with the metal handrail opposite."_ – Free .Spirit140*, "NathMarc November 7th"

From her perch on a nearby park bench, Ladybug watched in horror as the akumatized Ferrari smashed blindly through the wall of her school, trailing a screaming melee of her classmates in its wake. Clearly there was only one thing to do; she hated to waste her power on a subsidiary matter, rather than the capture of the actual akuma, but there was no help for it. With the art room's doorframe stuck to the splitter of his car and covering its windshield, Grand Prix was liable to mow down dozens of innocent people before she could stop him long enough to return him to normal; that had to be taken care of somehow, and Chat's mysterious absence left it up to her.

"Lucky Charm!" she cried, and flung her yo-yo upward. The usual radiance of power surrounded it, and she held out her hands for its gift – and then she stared at the red-and-black refrigerator magnet that fell into them.

"What's that for?" said a voice behind her. Nathaniel Kurtzberg had evidently taken shelter behind Ladybug's bench; now he was staring up at her Charm-ur with the same puzzlement she was used to seeing Chat display.

Ladybug frowned, and glanced around. In quick succession, her Coccinella-Vision illumined her yo-yo, the knob on the art-room door, and the railing around a Metro-station stairway on the opposite side of the street; the idea clicked in her mind, and she grinned. "You'll see," she said. "By the way, do you have any food on you?"

Nathaniel frowned, and fished in his pocket. "Um… just this," he said, bringing out a rather battered granola bar. "Why, are you hungry?"

"No, but I know someone who will be in a minute," said Ladybug, snatching the bar from his hand. "Thanks a million."

"Uh… any time."

Without further ado, Ladybug leaped into the middle of the street, and attached the magnet to her yo-yo. "Hey, Grand Prix!" she shouted. "Over here!"

Grand Prix, hearing her voice, whirled his car around and drove wildly forward, visions of a seized Miraculous dancing in his head. Ladybug, in her turn, darted the rest of the way across the street, secured herself behind the railing, and flung her yo-yo; the magnet latched onto the doorknob, and, with a dexterous flick of her wrist, she managed to turn the knob and pull the door at the same time, causing it to swing open just in time, and just wide enough, to strike the edge of the railing at 44 meters per second and be torn from its hinges by the force of the impact.

Once the splinters had stopped flying, Ladybug ran forward and detached her yo-yo from what remained of the door. Now all she had to do was un-transform, feed Tikki, re-transform, hunt down Chat, and find some way of subduing a man whom, so far as she could see, she couldn't even approach without being splattered across the Place de la Concorde. Just another day in her superheroic life.

* * *

 _"Marinette almost choked, as she realized Alya though she was so down because Adrien wasn't there."_ –Kazel Menra, "Cat's Closet"

"Tikki," said Marinette, her voice trembling on the brink of hysteria, "didn't you and Master Fu say that my new realization power depended on my emotions – that I could only make my mental images into reality if I had a present wellspring of intense, untainted happiness to draw on? Didn't you say that that was why I didn't need to worry about bringing my own private demons to life – or, worse, allowing Hawkmoth to do it for me? _Didn't you say that?_ "

"Yes," said Tikki, wondering. "Yes, of course we did, Marinette. Why shouldn't we have? It's true."

"True!" Marinette shrilled. "True! Great! So how come just now, while I was outside mooning about Adrien being away –" (and that told Tikki there was definitely something amiss, since ordinarily Marinette would have eaten rat poison sooner than admit that so bluntly) "– I happened to say out loud that I wished Alya at least were here, _and she was?_ "

Tikki stared. "She was?"

"She was!" said Marinette. "I could have reached out and touched her! And then I let out this little strangled gasp, my attention wavered, and she was gone! Tikki, _what's happening to me?_ "

"I… don't know, Marinette," said Tikki slowly. "I've never heard of anything like that before. But, whatever it is, you mustn't let yourself worry about it; that's only going to make things worse. And, anyway, I'm sure there's nothing _to_ worry about; if anything was going seriously wrong with your powers, then I, as the source of those powers, would have to know about it. And I don't, so there can't be."

Marinette took a deep breath. "Right," she said faintly. "Right, that's… that's logical, isn't it?"

"Of course," said Tikki, trying not to think about the possible ways in which it wasn't. "You just need to relax, Marinette – go read a nice book, or something. Nothing's going to happen, if you just keep calm."

* * *

 _"See how [L]adybug wavered a little to long seeing Adrien hanging on the rooftop."_ –justwritting1moretime, "Where Is Adrien?"

"All right, I think that's everything," said Ladybug to her broker, M. Comte. "I want to go long in wheat and cocoa, short in adzuki beans and feeder cattle, and hold steady in oilseeds and palladium."

"Very good, miss," said M. Comte. "What about milk? Did you want to take a strong position in that?"

Ladybug considered. "I'm not sure," she said. "What do you think? Is cheese becoming more or less popular over time?"

"Oh, definitely less, miss," said M. Comte, who was lactose-intolerant. "Especially Camembert; no-one likes that smelly stuff."

"I see," said Ladybug. "Okay, then, I guess I'll go short in…"

At this juncture, she heard a tapping sound from the window, and turned to see Chat Noir dangling by his baton from the roof of the brokerage building, shaking his head frantically and extending his arms as wide as they would go. She hesitated, wavering. "Well, actually, maybe I should… or at least… that is…"

M. Comte gazed at her expectantly.

"Oh, never mind," said Ladybug. "Yes, short on milk, too."

 _After all,_ she reflected, _what does that crazy cat know about high finance, anyway?_

* * *

*Properly without a space before the period, but this site's software won't let me transcribe that.


	2. Paris, Principle, Luka's, Marinette

_"'I'm not sure. I think they only talk about Ladybug, Chat Noir and Wolfette in Pairs[,]' Felicity said."_ –maddycullen23, "Miraculous London"

"Really?" said Marinette with a frown. "Why?"

"Well, again, I'm not really sure," said Felicity. "But it does seem to be a pattern; I've overheard lots of conversations lately about them between pairs of people, but as soon as a third person enters, the subject immediately changes. Maybe Hawkmoth's put some sort of brain-wash on the city, so that people just aren't capable of thinking about our heroes in groups of more than two at a time; then when the three of them next get together, they'll forget who they're supposed to be, and they'll be easy prey for his latest akuma."

Marinette snorted. "Come on, Felicity," she said. "Hawkmoth may be powerful, but he doesn't have _that_ kind of power. Anyway, if there is some sort of spell like that on the city, shouldn't it be on us, too? How come we haven't felt any…"

Alya's voice from behind her interrupted her and Felicity's colloquy. "Hey, girls!" said the Ladyblogger brightly. "What's up with you two?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Felicity. "We were just talking about… about…" She trailed off, and frowned. "Marinette, what _were_ we talking about?"

Marinette blinked, and scrunched up her forehead in thought. "Um…"

* * *

 _"'It's just a pencil.' 'I know that, Plagg. But it's the principal of the thing.'"_ –MsBlackOut, "Return to Me"

"Oh, it is, is it?" said Plagg.

"Sure," said Adrien. "And these two gel pens here are the naughty children who got sent to his office, and they're terrified that he's going to deliver some really harsh punishment – but it turns out that the pencil is really a kindly principal underneath his rigid exterior, so everything ends happily and…"

"Yeah, okay, great, kid," Plagg interrupted. "You go ahead and project your idealized public-school fantasies onto helpless writing implements. Meanwhile, your kwami's going to find a more grown-up way to spend the afternoon, okay?"

"Sure, that's fine," said Adrien – and, as Plagg flew off to the kitchen in search of Camembert, he returned his attention to the makeshift principal's office on the coffee table. "'I'll never pass notes again, M. Bic!'" he said in a high-pitched voice, moving the green pen back and forth. "'Please don't spank us!'"

* * *

 _"He managed to keep his voice steady. 'I don't think Lukas right for you.'"_ –ShipQueen08, "Chat Gets Jealous"

"Well, of course not," said Ladybug. "I mean, come on, he's forty years old, male, and German. If it comes to that, I don't exactly think Dietrich right for you, either."

Chat readily conceded the point.

"But we have to let the others know somehow that we've been stranded in Golden-Age Hollywood," Ladybug continued, "and the only way to do that is to have a movie made about us, so that it can show up in Alya's DVD collection and cue her in that there's something wrong. So we have to put up with what Warner Brothers decides to do with us – and, if that means having Paul Lukas play me and Marlene Dietrich play you instead of the other way around, well, we just have to live with it, don't we?"

* * *

 _"'What's wrong, Marionette?' came the soft voice of her partner."_ –shadow12, "Love Is Crazy, Love Is Hard"

The red-and-black figure sighed and turned to face him, moving carefully so as to keep her strings from getting tangled. "Oh, nothing, really, Rod Puppet," she said. "I was just having one of those reveries of mine. You know, the ones where we're real human superheroes instead of puppets?"

Rod Puppet frowned, and shook his varnished wooden head. "You shouldn't do that, Marionette," he said. "You know the Master doesn't like you dwelling on those fancies of yours. We are what we are; we always have been, and it's no good imagining otherwise."

"I know, I know," Marionette said wearily. "But I just can't help it, Roddy. It doesn't feel like imagination, somehow; it's as though I'm remembering things that really happened, even though I know they couldn't have…"

"Shh!" said Rod Puppet. "Here he comes!"

Marionette sharply fell silent, and the two little dancing dolls raised their heads and smiled dutifully as their Master entered the workshop, earning a satisfied chuckle from the silver-masked showman. "So, my little puppets," he said, "have you been behaving for your dear Master Hawkmoth?"


	3. Fencing, Burglar, Peers, Wry

_"If fancying is canceled because of the weather, replace the activity with music instead."_ –chachingmel123, "When the Rain Stops"

As the Agreste mansion's music room filled with Gounod's majestic strains, Plagg rose from his hero's pocket and began bobbing appreciatively back and forth in time to the melody. "Nice," he said. "The overture to _Roméo et Juliette_ , isn't it?"

Adrien nodded. "It seemed appropriate," he said, "since I'm only doing this as a replacement for fancying class. Apparently M. Roué doesn't think the worst October thunderstorm in ten years is a suitable time to learn how to properly get one's heart snared by a pretty face. Go figure."

"Eh, just as well, really," said Plagg. "I always said it was a waste of good money, sending _you_ to a class like that."

Adrien paused in the middle of a scale, and gave him a sharp look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Plagg grinned. "Just that I've seen how you react when Ladybug's around," he said, "and I'm pretty sure you already know everything there is to know about fancying her."

* * *

 _"She was a cat bugler, known for slipping in undetected, and leaving no trace."_ –missdragongirl, "Chat Burglar"

"Roger!" Mme. Raincomprix whispered urgently to her husband. "Roger, wake up! There's someone in the parlor, playing Taps to the cat!"

Her husband sat bolt upright, his eyes gleaming with constabulary zeal. "On it!" he said, leaping out of bed with a heavy thud. "Don't you worry, honey! That law-breaking fiend's picked the wrong house this time!"

He snatched up his revolver from off the bureau and tiptoed downstairs, careful to make no sound that could be heard over the blaring bugle. Unfortunately, this caused him to take more time than he usually would have; by the time he approached the parlor door, the bugler on the other side was already reaching the last few notes. It was now or never…

He twisted the doorknob, shoved, and burst into the room, holding his revolver out in front of him. "Freeze!" he shouted. "In the name of the…"

Then he lowered his gun, and stared in infuriated bafflement at the same scene as half a dozen others before him: a half-open window, the curtains rustling slightly in the breeze, and a room that was completely empty save for the happily purring calico reclining in the middle of the carpet. He groaned, and buried his face in his hands. "Curses!" he lamented. "Another victory for the Cat Bugler! Is there no stopping this fiendish mastermind?"

The faint, mocking laughter of the wind was his only reply.

* * *

 _"He didn't miss the subtle glances in his direction from his piers."_ –DFTBAPleaseandThankyou, "Enveloped"

"I'm telling you, boss, you're imagining things," said Nino. "I've been keeping tabs on all the boys, and there ain't nobody been talking disloyal about you."

Adrien shook his head. "Not when you're around, maybe, Nino," he said. "They know you're my man, and they wouldn't blow their secret anywhere you could hear. But something's up, all the same. I didn't get to be Paris's biggest waterfront boss without having a sense for these things; I can tell it in the looks they give me when I go out to the piers." He scowled. "It must be that stinking union agitator, Dupain-what's-her-name. She's been making trouble ever since she moved into my territory; it's high time I did something about her."

"Amen to that, boss," said Nino. "You want me to get some of the boys together and pay her a visit?"

Adrien chuckled grimly, and stroked his jet-black ring. "No, there's no need for you boys to get your hands dirty," he said. "I can arrange a neat little cataclysm for her all on my own."

* * *

 _"'…She can have him right now, to be honest,' Marinette replied with a rye laugh."_ –BelleBasBleue, "Imagine"

"Ew!" said Alya, and reached for a napkin to brush off the crumbs of half-chewed rye bread that her friend's laugh had sprayed over her shirt. "Seriously, Marinette, next time wait till you swallow, okay?"

"Sorry," said Marinette, covering her mouth contritely. "I should have known I couldn't say that with a straight face. I mean, seriously – me, being willing to let Chloe have Adrien? Me, Marinette Dupain-Cheng? Get real, right?"

"Oh, totally," said Alya, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "We all know you _really_ want him to end up with Lila."

And Marinette, who happened to have just taken another bite from her roll, doubled over and sprayed the ground with another barrage of saliva and rye crumbs. "Oh, Alya, please!" she gasped hoarsely. "You're going to make me choke!"


End file.
